Wabuke receives 2017 NEA Creative Writing Fellowship

The National Endowment for the Arts has announced that Hope Wabuke is one of 37 writers to receive an FY 2017 individual creative writing fellowships of $25,000.

“The NEA has an excellent record of supporting writers who have gone on to have impressive literary careers,” said NEA Director of Literature Amy Stolls. “With their talent and diverse backgrounds, this year’s Creative Writing Fellows, including Hope Wabuke, will add to our country’s rich literary history.”

"I am extremely grateful to the NEA for affirming my poetry in this way," says Wabuke. "I will use the resources from this fellowship to complete work on my poetry collection The Body Family, which explores my family's escape from Idi Amin's Ugandan genocide and the aftermath of healing in America."

Wabuke was selected from more than 1,800 eligible applicants. Through its creative writing fellowships program, the National Endowment for the Arts gives writers the time and space to create, revise, conduct research, and connect with readers. Applications are reviewed through an anonymous process on their artistic excellence. Fellowships alternate between poetry and prose each year and in FY 2017 fellowships are in poetry. The full list of FY 2017 Creative Writing Fellows is available here.

Many American recipients of the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry and Fiction were recipients of NEA creative writing fellowships early in their careers..